Forgotten leaders- English and Irish women religious and the development of secondary education for all Catholic girls in the opening decades of the twentieth century

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of English and Irish apostolic female religious congregations in establishing secondary schooling for girls in England from the end of the nineteenth century up to the end of the 1920’s. Sisters in apostolic congregations took simple vows, and were not bound to the cloister, but actively engaged in work in the communities in which they lived. They played an important role in parishes and in education, as the Catholic church grew in England in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. A number of congregations were responsible for establishing girls’ secondary schools, which met standards required by the government in curriculum, teaching, facilities, and examination work, thus enabling them to access government grant funding. This meant that they could offer an affordable education to pupils from families of modest means. The work of these orders in education has been neglected in the literature.
Much of the literature describes convents educating girls from well off backgrounds in preparation for marriage and managing the home. In England the literature is based, primarily, on studies of the French orders working in secondary education. The work of English and Irish orders has thus been overlooked. Many of them established provision in poor urban areas, against significant obstacles, and offered opportunities to girls that would not otherwise have been available to them.
Evidence from national, convent, school, and diocesan archives demonstrates that the religious sisters invested financially to provide school buildings. They worked as professional teachers in the classroom, and as leaders of their schools to deliver a curriculum that enabled success in examinations. They provided Catholic education for Catholic girls from a wider social background than current research states, using national scholarship systems, so that at least 25% of pupils held free places. In addition, fees were kept low. As a result, girls from different social backgrounds were able to access a good quality of secondary education. The quality of this education, enabled girls to access courses in higher and further education and better employment opportunities. This is underlined by the fact that three times as many girls as boys were able to access a free place in a Catholic grammar school after 1944, because of the foundations laid by female religious orders in recognised schools.